I interview the House team and the Dream team of Friedman and Schwartz at UCSD and ultimately chose Friedman and Schwartz because I felt most comfortable with them, their facilities were state of the art and modern, and Dr. Schwartz is second to none with his level of experience dealing with AN’s. They are considered the Dream Team for good reason.

I’m in contact with dr Friedman and dr Schwartz now to schedule surgery. Working on insurance approval at the moment since I’m out of state. My major concern is flying after. Has anyone who flew out to them had issues due to flying? I know they require you to stay at least 10 days in the area but I still am curious. Thank you!

I had no problem flying home (across the entire US) following surgery in CA, other than extreme fatigue due to weather-related flight delays. Within a couple of days I was fine and fully rested. I did wrap a clean, pretty scarf around my head to ward off any potentially germy headrests in the airplane so had no issues with that. My husband was with me so I had an arm to lean on when needed for balance, but otherwise I was fully independent.

Catherine, as noted above, I had surgery with Friedman and Schwartz and flew home after 12 days to Hawaii. You will notice some difficulty on landing with clearing your ears. It’s not recommended to hold your nose and blow. I just use the yawn technique and it eventually cleared after we were on the ground. Definitely worth it to use miles or otherwise upgrade to business or First Class for the return flight in my opinion. Another good idea is to bring along a neck pillow you like to rest your head on as it is likely to be uncomfortable putting any pressure on the area around your incision.